


FIVE TIMES ANDERS SAW GARRETT HAWKE SHIRTLESS AND ONE TIME HE TOOK INITIATIVE

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:36:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thesilverfeatheredraven @ tumblr wanted shirtless Hawke. The title says it all. <i>It’s late in the day when Varric brings Hawke in, weight braced between his staff and his brother’s pale shoulders. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	FIVE TIMES ANDERS SAW GARRETT HAWKE SHIRTLESS AND ONE TIME HE TOOK INITIATIVE

**I.**  
It’s late in the day when Varric brings Hawke in, weight braced between his staff and his brother’s pale shoulders. Anders pulls out his cleanest cot and helps lever him down onto it, while Hawke has the audacity to _laugh_ , peeling his green jerkin back, only wincing when the leather sticks to cooling blood.

‘Carta daggers,’ he explains, and Anders bats his hand away from covering the damage. ‘Never saw them coming. Dwarven rogues are so _small,_ Anders. It’s an unnatural advantage.’

‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Hawke,’ Varric says.

‘He’s _babbling nonsense,_ ’ Carver adds, with a hint of disgust.

Anders shoos them both from the room before he lays his hands on Hawke, on his knees in the dirt, right palm glowing as he extends it to sew flesh to flesh, skin to skin. Only when he’s finished does he allow his fingers to brush the smooth muscle above Hawke’s hip, broad and pale, admiring his own handiwork.

There won’t be a scar.

Hawke shivers, then nudges his thigh against Anders’s side, post-healing lassitude settling into his limbs. He’ll rest here for an hour or so, then disappear into the wilds of Kirkwall once more, throwing himself upon daggers and swords and spider mandibles like he never learned mages were supposed to keep to the back.

‘Have you got anything for me to wear back to Lowtown?’ Hawke asks, the wicked light in his eyes already rekindling. ‘I’ll cause a riot if I walk through the streets like this.’

Anders purses his lips, too proud to admit he agrees, but not proud enough to keep from smiling.

 **II.**  
He wouldn’t go back to the Deep Roads for just anyone, but there’s no time to explain that after what happens with Carver.

Anders is just glad he could do something about it, _be a healer_ , at least in a manner of speaking. Sometimes the cure’s worse than the curse, and he wonders later whether he won’t forever be associated with the hurt—if every word he’s ever spoken against the Wardens will come back to bite him in the ass.

 _You did this to my brother,_ he imagines Hawke saying, a low husk in his voice that means he isn’t joking anymore. Then, Anders rolls over, a loose thread in his pillow tickling his nose. It’s late, and the clinic’s lantern long since extinguished, no light at all in Darktown—as the saying goes.

When Anders closes his eyes, Hawke reappears in the back of his mind, no longer rife with accusation—or at least not the sort Anders levies at anyone other than himself. This time, Hawke’s stripped to the waist, broad shoulders flexing as he stretches his arms above his head, flecks of white sand freckling the dark hair on his chest. They’re somewhere along the Wounded Coast, not hunting shades or vicious marauders or pike-wielding sten, but frolicking in the surf.

Hawke catches him around the waist, nose sunburned and peeling across its broken bridge.

‘Show me that Grey Warden stamina,’ he murmurs, and nips sharply at Anders’s ear like a poorly-trained mabari at unguarded fingers, searching for scraps under the table.

Anders gasps against his own fist, burying a moan in the miserable sag of his pillow.

 **III.**  
Even as Hawke’s leading him toward the four-poster bed, heavy velvet canopies tied back for the night, Anders can’t make himself believe it’s really happening, that he’s _really_ here.

He thought for sure Isabela’s flirting would eclipse this chance, and if not _her,_ then the mysterious nights Hawke spends with Fenris, drinking and talking in a lonely mansion, half its windows broken in, and most of its ceiling gone astray.

Some call that insanity; others call it _romantic_.

Justice stirs within him, bright Fade-light shimmering before it extinguishes for the night, just like a snuffed lantern above a boarded door in Darktown. Anders can’t think about how long the silence will last this time any more than he can think about how easily this could disappear, Hawke on his back and pulling Anders down with him.

‘I think you forgot to close the door,’ Hawke says, breath hot at Anders’s throat.

By the time he makes it back to bed—stumbling across the room to close _and_ lock the bloody thing, so curious house dwarves won’t turn up and ruin everything—Hawke’s naked, sprawled across the covers, posing. He reminds Anders one of the naughty Antivan block-prints he keeps hidden in the false drawer of his desk, and Anders laughs before he gasps.

There’s a pale scar hooked around the curve of his shoulder that Anders hasn’t seen before—but the firelight’s beginning to die, and he doesn’t waste their precious time on questions.

 **IV.**  
The templars are beginning to close in on the clinic. It’s only a matter of time now; it’s only ever been a matter of time. Anders can taste their steel in his throat when he swallows, and his head rings with Justice’s answer—always a thrust, never a parry.

He’d go around wearing cotton in his ears all day, but that doesn’t help when the voices are inside his head.

‘Anders,’ Hawke says, from somewhere over his shoulder.

It’s a distraction, and Anders twitches, rubbing at his ear like he can block out the sound. He should be more gracious than this—it’s Hawke’s desk he’s writing at, Hawke’s comfortable velvet cushions he’s currently creasing with his bony arse—but there are only seven pages completed in his manifesto, and he’s got to get to ten before the night is up.

‘ _Anders,_ ’ Hawke says again. Strong forearms wrap around him from behind, and suddenly Hawke’s warm chest is pressed against Anders’s rigid back, bare skin on feathers, nose pressed against earlobe. ‘Come. To. Bed.’

He can feel Hawke’s beard prickling his cheek, softer than it should be and softer than it looks. Anders has always liked beards, and he never complains when his skin’s rough from kissing in the mornings—although that happens less and less these days, now that he falls asleep stiff-backed and weary in the chair with only his arms for pillows.

‘Three more pages,’ Anders mutters, brushing the feathery end of his quill over Hawke’s elbow.

The candle’s only burned halfway through. Time isn’t like wax, and it won’t wait for him when he blows out the little flame.

 **V.**  
It’s Anders who heals the blisters in Hawke’s hands after he’s been chopping firewood for a week, just a day short of Ostwick.

It won’t be far enough. Even _Ferelden_ , where the king favors mages, won’t be far enough. Anders knows everyone’s thinking it, can read it in the hard line of Carver’s jaw and the way Isabela’s jokes come fast and brittle, like if she can just heap them high enough no one will notice what’s underneath.

There’s a welt at the base of Hawke’s thumb that’s nearing infection, skin swelling red and angry and too-soft where there should be hard callus to protect him.

When Anders takes his hand, it’s the first time they’ve touched in over a week. Sweat dampens the center of his chest, the dark hairs on the pale skin, a collection of freckles Anders remembers better than the scar.

‘Has it finally worked?’ Hawke asks. ‘Half-naked and sweaty and bested by a tree-stump, and you find me irresistible at last?’

Anders’s tongue is heavy, his jaw too tight for speaking. He leads Hawke through the trees instead, wet leaves and branches slapping his face and shoulders, until they reach a narrow stream, water glinting off mineral-veins in buried rock. They’re threads of silver, not blue, so bright Anders wants to shield his eyes.

‘It’s a little early for getting wet and naked, don’t you think?’ Hawke asks, clever fingers curling around Anders’s before he can pull them back again. ‘If you wanted to see me freeze my balls off, I can think of a few better ways. More fun, too.’

Anders wants to kiss him, but he doesn’t remember how—not without Justice telling him when and where and what, offering order and solace, the scope and promise of his unblemished hand.

‘Wash your fingers,’ Anders murmurs. ‘Unless you want to lose them.’

‘Oh, Anders,’ Hawke says, affecting a swoon, before he kicks off his boots and picks his way across the slippery bank of the river. ‘You were always so _good_ at foreplay.’

 **VI.**  
They could leave with Isabela when she finally sets sail, but Hawke says too many of the others get seasick, and he’d never put Varric through the agony, anyway—that a dwarf on deck’s so much more _depressing_ than a pirate on land.

‘So nice of you to think about the rest of us while we march exaltedly toward Cumberland,’ Varric says, just as Isabela kisses Hawke’s cheek, and Anders is surprised to feel the stirrings of age-old jealousy, a whisper that eclipses even Varric’s weighted words.

That night, Anders touches Hawke’s knee, but he doesn’t let him cover his hand, looping his fingers through the laces in his jerkin instead, his pulse beating somewhere deep below.

He looks the same as when they met, wearing green leather, half-heartedly patched, and Anders’s knuckles slide against skin and hair and scars. It tickles; the twitching of the muscle beneath his touch betrays the catch in Hawke’s breath.

‘I always wanted to ask about this one,’ Anders says, thumb against the littlest scar, but he kisses it before Hawke can answer, Hawke’s hands coming up against his hips. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why I never did before.’

 **END**


End file.
